How to Watch TV

At this stage, as an ethical and respectful significant other, you should reach for the remote, shut it off before anything gets spoiled, and carry your sweet snoring loved one to bed, right? Absolutely not. Especially if this is a recurring issue, forcing yourself to endure TV blue balls is nothing but a recipe for resentment. The only logical solution is to watch the entire episode, relieve the tension and curiosity that’s been building inside you, and then solemnly swear not to discuss anything about the episode until your partner is able to watch it themselves in a more wakeful moment. And if they request that you join them for that mulligan viewing? Do so gracefully—but also don’t be afraid to whip out your phone and film their horrified reactions when the Red Wedding does its thing. —Yang-Yi Goh

Mindy Tucker / Courtesy of Josh Gondelman

If you’re in a couple, find a show just for you.

I think it’s really helpful to have shows that you watch separately, so that you’re not tempted to push ahead on mutual-viewing shows without your partner. When I’m out of the house, my wife, Maris, watches shows about silly mysteries that take place on boats and somber mysteries that take place in Philadelphia. And I watch a lot of sports and stand-up specials and shows about jovial bros after she falls asleep. —Josh Gondelman, comedian, writer, and wife guy

Pick out the TV show together before you start eating.

There is no negotiation more important in my household than deciding what my partner and I should watch right before we start digging into dinner. Learn from us—and don’t let the food go cold—by making sure you’ve already discussed and landed on a TV choice you’re both excited about. (Sex and the City always pairs well with a meal.) —Carolina Gonzalez

David Doobinin / Courtesy of Terry Real

Terry Real, founder of Relational Life Therapy (and relationship therapist to Bruce Springsteen, Gwyneth Paltrow, and more), gives us his professional rules for couples watching TV together:

1. If you’re going to watch TV together, watch it together. That means you pick a program you can both get excited about. I don’t ask my wife to watch Dune: Part Two with me and she doesn’t ask me to watch The View.
2. Negotiate how you’re going to watch. Some people like watching in silence. Some people like running commentary. Often that’s gender-specific. Negotiate that up front.
3. Talk about it after. Don’t just watch it passively. Talk about your thoughts and feelings. Use it.
4. Use it as something that you like—not as an avoidance of intimacy. You watch TV along with having talks with each other and enjoying each other, not instead of.

Dads, stop standing up two feet away from the TV screen.

What are you all doing up there? And why are you asking so many questions about the plot? Just take a load off and sit on the couch with the rest of us. It’s nice down here. —G.P.

Just leave on the motion smoothing at your parents’ house.

Whether they’re falling for AI slop on Facebook or parroting whatever cable news channel they’re loyal to, your parents, if you’re fortunate enough to still have them, may make you cringe with their media consumption. You should give them whatever grace you can. Leaving them to watch their stories and sports and political programs in peace, with motion smoothing on, is an easy opportunity to do that. Filmmakers and Redditors hate the “uncanny” look created by this default setting, but if your parents are anything like mine, they’ll hate you messing with their TV even more. —Nick Catucci

Don’t talk about TV at parties.

Public conversation about television is deadly. Under the right circumstances, sure, it’s harmless enough to ask an acquaintance if they watched I Think You Should Leave, especially if you see a guy in a hot dog suit. But when you find yourself explaining the plot of Shogun over lagers at the team happy hour, or insisting that season four of The Wire is a modern masterpiece at a karaoke bar, then it’s time for you to reel it in. Also, everyone gets somewhere between 3 and 11 TV show recommendations every day. So just assume yours is the 12th, and that whoever you’re talking to is never going to watch any of them. If you really can’t resist, simply say, “Hey, I really think you should check out Cheers.” But save your spiel about how the show is an allegory for the working class and oppressive social structures. —Noah Johnson

Josh Sisk / Courtesy of Kyle Chayka

Find a way to beat the algorithm.

Netflix doesn’t want you to find interesting TV. It’s been a while since streaming home pages have delivered anything cool instead of just the latest half-season of Emily in Paris episodes or Bridgerton spinoff. Searching barely helps, because the platform makes it useless. You have to get off of the platforms to find good TV, and then go back on them to access it. I recommend searching for streaming productions from other countries. Check out what the BBC is putting out, or France’s Canal+, or DR from Denmark. Another hack is to browse the foreign-language streaming options on international flights. (Don’t just watch John Wick again—you wouldn’t order a bagel in Paris, would you?) That’s how I found Valeria, Spain’s millennial version of Sex and the City (on Netflix), and the French show HPI about an amateur woman detective. My real secret for getting good TV, though? The Pirate Bay. Google it. —Kyle Chayka, author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture and New Yorker contributor

YouTube is the best streaming platform.

Has its algorithm sent countless impressionable young people (and uncritical thinkers of any age) down a radicalization rabbit hole, straight into the clown mouth of Jordan Petersen and his degenerate ilk? I mean, yeah, probably. Still, though: Streaming has taught us that the best TV slate is one you curate entirely for yourself, a.k.a. the only person whose taste you can trust. And YouTube remains unbeatable as a place to do that. Show me the streamer who’ll serve me a live Eric Dolphy/Charles Mingus concert filmed in Belgium in 1964, home movies of Disneyland’s long-defunct Mission to Mars ride, Michael Mann’s unstreamable rough-draft-of-Heat TV movie L.A. Takedown, the making-of documentary from the DVD of Magnolia, Charlie Rose talking to David Foster Wallace about David Lynch, the John Mulaney Hot Ones episode, Mitch Hedberg’s first Comedy Central special, The Byrds playing “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” at Hugh Hefner’s pad, and that one clip of Jay-Z hearing Timbaland play the “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” beat for the first time—lost TV, foreign TV, stuff that was never on TV but should have been—and I will sign the heck up. Until then, I’ll be over here, at my job as head of programming at the Alex Channel. —A.P.

Apple TV+ gives you the best post-prestige bang for your buck.

Despite seriously investing in quality original programming with major talent, Apple TV+ continues to have tons of shows that fly way under the radar. (And also a very popular show where Idris Elba saves the day, in part via in-flight game system. Don’t think too hard about it.) It’s the home of Prestige Dad TV for a reason. —G.P.

Local news is the best news.

The thought of firing up cable news, especially during an election year, is enough to give me agita. But I’m a die-hard local-news watcher. My preferred network is NY1, which makes where I live, the biggest city in America, feel like a small town. One memorable segment was strictly about the shortest streets in every borough—I’d like to see CNN try to pull that off. —G.P.

Cable is the best way to watch sports.

Cable is the only proper way to watch sports now, as cable has the goated “previous channel” option, cable does not force you to purchase and download five different streaming apps to watch a game, and most importantly, cable does not buffer. —M.R.

Always mute the commercials.

When people complain about whatever annoying television commercial is currently ruling their living room, I’m always puzzled. How are you, an adult, letting the ads win? You can simply mute them. Do it until it becomes a habit. Whether it’s live television, YouTube, or the ads on whatever streaming service you’re using, smash that mute button and enjoy 60 seconds of zen. —M.R.